Wil Shipley on bugs

“Software is written by humans. Humans get tired. Humans become discouraged. They aren't perfect beings. As developers, we want to pretend this isn't so, that our software springs from our head whole and immaculate like the goddess Athena. Customers don't want to hear us admit that we fail.

“The measure of a man cannot be whether he ever makes mistakes, because he will make mistakes. It's what he does in response to his mistakes. The same is true of companies.”

I’ve been thinking about mistakes and bugs as I beta test “Sifter”:www.sifterapp.com/. Since it’s not ready for launch yet I won’t comment on it specifically, except to say that despite many bug systems becoming very mature (in some cases, too mature) every developer still has a different set of needs. There will always be a new bug system promising to fix all your problems, and for many of us we have to keep reminding ourselves not to code our own. Been there done that.